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By 2050 there will be 9 billion carbon-burning, plastic-polluting, calorie-consuming people on the planet. By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario. Such dire population predictions aren't the stuff of sci-fi; those numbers come from one of the most trusted world authorities, the United Nations.
But what if they're wrong? Not like, off by a rounding error, but like totally, completely goofed?
That's the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrel Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. "In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline," they write. "Once that decline begins, it will never end."
The World Might Actually Run Out of People (archive)
Who do you think is right ? The United Nations or Darrel Bricker/John Ibbitson ?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:09AM (8 children)
Perhaps you are in denial of human evolution, or at least that somehow the mind is magically excluded?
Consider the complex behaviors that cause people to have sex. We wouldn't have those behaviors except for the fact that evolution burned them into our DNA. Those behaviors were, in times past, wholly adequate for reproduction. Going forward, that isn't enough. Evolution will select for people who desire to reproduce.
People with the right traits already exist in our population. In time, their descendants will be numerous, and all others will be wiped from the Earth.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:19AM (1 child)
Perhaps you are in denial that extinction (for whatever the causes, lack of sex drive included) is still a reality.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:48PM
OK, so option one is we stop reproducing and go extinct; option two is we evolve to desire reproduction specifically (rather than just sex).
But as usual there is a third option...decouple reproduction (at least in the classical sense) from population growth. One way to do that is life extension; another is artificial wombs. We don't need to rely on blind mutations to drive natural selection in the right direction when we have genetic modification tech. We don't need to rely on hardwired instincts when we have logic. And don't forget the impacts of society/government as well -- we could, for example, simply pay women to get pregnant (well, we kinda do already, so just keep increasing it as needed.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:21AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:32AM (1 child)
That has never happened. Homo S. has evolved to have few young and care for them.
You have confused humans with spiders or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @10:13AM
What a stupid comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics#Pre-Galtonian_philosophies [wikipedia.org]
https://www.merseycare.nhs.uk/media/1749/disabiliyt-timeline-2013.pdf [merseycare.nhs.uk]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pipedwho on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)
What actually happens in evolution like this is that an out of control organism replicates until it either kills the host or is killed itself. If the population goes ape shit then people that can't control themselves will end up in the resource barren areas (whether by force or because they over consumed it). When that happens they die off and the more constrained breeders end up living in balance with the environment. This may occur as long term evolutionary swings between 'people breeding like rabbits', and 'people not breeding at all or at much lower rates'.
If people outstrip the ability of the planet to support them, then there will be competition for the remaining resources that may not be replenished fast enough causing famine and hardship to reduce the population by attrition. At some point the population will oscillate below its drain on the environment and things will start looking good. The 'breeders' will have more babies and the cycle will repeat.
However, it is an incorrect assumption that human breeding is binary. It is quite possible that breeding becomes a socially influenced or controlled phenomenon where it is a negative trait to have a desire to breed beyond the means of the environment to support it. This may come in the form of self imposed desires (eg. I have two kids, and now I'm happy), or in extreme cases by force (eg. the majority of living people force the governments to crack down on over breeding). This will inherently dampen any wild oscillations between eras of mass famine and plentiful bounty.
Unless overpopulation causes an armageddon of some sort (eg. WWIII, a genetic engineering project that sterilises the entire planet, catastrophic loss of existing resources, etc), then there is no reason to believe that it will fall into an endless decline. Imagine that the population drops down to X Million people (either suddenly or slowly for whatever reason). Assuming the remaining resources on the planet can easily support this many (and possibly many more), there is no reason that breeding will not naturally increase to maintain a 'comfortable' average population that neither stresses the environment or falls below a critical mass for civilisation to continue.
It is absurd to assume (absent armageddon) that the population of any sustainable region would reduce to a tribe/village quantity of people, and they all stand there and decide to just die off instead of having a few kids. In the same way it makes no sense to assume the population can continue rising indefinitely. There is a negative feedback loop between environmental sustainability and human population, and no reason to assume that there is no steady state solution to the problem with a comfortably dampened level of oscillation that can't be maintained.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 05 2019, @03:35AM
You're on the right track. These sorts of predictions are more fearmongering to generate book sales than useful warnings.
Life has had the ability to overpopulate ever since there's been life. But, populating to the max is not a viable long term strategy. A bust is an inevitable consequence of a boom. During the bust times, the organisms that boomed are so weak they are easily out competed and replaced. They may be in such bad shape that they die out even without competitors helping to nudge them into extinction. For instance, suppose during the boom they found and consumed every last member of all the prey or plant species they depend upon, leaving not even alternatives. All life today has deep seated instincts that maximize reproductive success. And success in reproduction is often more subtle than raw output. Those organisms that are extremely fecund are restrained by predation and other external factors.
In any case, thanks to our knowledge and the way our biology works, we are in control, and we do restrain ourselves. Look at all the hate that Octomom got. People have enormous families only when circumstances look favorable. 19th century America went through a population boom only because there was a great deal of land occupied by a very few natives who had no choice but to roll with the massive change that the far more numerous and technologically advanced Europeans were bringing. Today, the descendants of those huge families have much more modest family sizes.
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Tuesday February 05 2019, @08:12PM
making evolutionary-psychology predictions is a lot like trying to predict earthquakes. Sure you might have the general idea down but there is seriously no way you can know with any degree of certainty.
-Love, ants_in_pants